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by Toku on Uncategorized

With Them Vs Against Them: How Justice Relates To Leadership

Our system of justice is adversarial. The state tries to convict the accused of their crimes, the defense tries to protect the accused by challenging the state’s case. It’s through this system we have decided that justice is done.

Many people use a similar process in their lives. They make an accusation against the world. They cast themselves in the noble fight for justice and the world is their adversary. When you do this you are always against people.

You are up against the other people looking for a parking space, up against the other people lining up to buy groceries, up against the people who disagree with you, and up against the people you love to be more right, safe, and justified.

But if you’re against someone you can’t ever really be with them. Which is why leaders are always finding a way to be with people. You and I are here trying to get home. I can let you into my lane, because we are working together. You and I are here trying to buy food, so I motion when a new lane opens up. You and I are trying to give and receive love together, so I take responsibility, I share my needs, I am willing to be vulnerable first.

Leadership, true transformational leadership asks us to get with people, to stand with them and for them. So long as you are up against people your capacity for leadership will be limited. So long as you are with people facing the challenges of life your capacity for leadership increases.

 
by Toku on Uncategorized

40 Things You May Not Know About Me

Recently I turned 40 and I was thinking a lot about my life and everything I experienced.

And while I share a lot about myself online there are still many things people don’t know about me. So to commemorate my birthday I’m going to share 40 things you may not know about me. I hope that as you see me, you’ll be more willing to see and share yourself.

  1. I once ran a fair game where I convinced people to put on a chicken suit, get inside an inflatable ring, and fight each other with oversized boxing gloves. The game was called sumo chicken boxing and people had to pay for the privilege.

  2. I once sang Christmas carols for Vice President Al Gore while his election fight against George Bush hung in the balance (he looked very tired)

  3. I volunteered for several summers as a counselor at a Buddhist summer camp. My counselor name was counselor Tofu.

  4. I have performed at the famous Blue Bird Cafe in Nashville and the best response I got was for a set of parody songs I wrote about balding. (Secret balding guy being my favorite)

  5. When I had hair I’d get self-conscious about the bald spot in the back of my head even though most people didn’t notice it. Which is why I usually wore a hat.

  6. The main reason I keep my head shaved is that I like the simplicity of it and I think I look better without hair.

  7. The only reason I didn’t have a beard for three years is because my ex-partner didn’t like how it look and felt, but I generally prefer having a beard and usually grow one every year.

  8. I left college with only 6 credit hours to finish. It took me an additional 6 years to finish those credit hours and finally graduate college (I had some stupid righteous story about it for a long time which I had to eventually admit was dumb)

  9. I almost had a minor in both dance and communications but didn’t get enough credit hours to finish either. My favorite dance classes were improv classes.

  10. In high school I was an award winning debater and speaker. But I really shined in mock congress where I introduced bills to annex Canada (I mean it’s basically the US anyway) and to turn Tennessee into a perfect parallelogram (It’s so close!)

  11. I once performed Mozarts Requiem in Carnegie Hall and it’s still one of my favorite pieces to this day to hear and sing along with.

  12. Until college I identified as a libertarian and voted for George Bush in the first election. It wasn’t until I got exposed to more ways of thinking that I slowly became more progressive. I now support universal health care and raising the minimum wage among other things.

  13. I was a soloist and select group singer in my church choir growing up and link many of my early spiritual experiences to performing music in church.

  14. My first ‘drug’ experiences were smoking cigarettes I had bought when I had gone to Germany to visit my sister (who was studying abroad). About once a month I would sneak out late at night and smoke behind the house where I grew up.

  15. For ten years I was a pack-a-day smoker. My preferred brand was Camel lights, though I would sometimes smoke camel reds and parliaments. Sometimes I still miss smoking, but not that often.

  16. My first ‘business’ was selling glass pipes that I bought from a friend of a cousin in Florida and resold to my friends at college. I made a pretty good profit, but I wasn’t great at the business side of things.

  17. In college my freshman roommates and I were so messy, tour guides would bring tours by our room to gawk at the spectacle and we had to write letters of apology to the housing services at the end of the year.

  18. While many people know I lived as a Zen monk for two years, few people know that for a year I serve as the Jisha or attendant to one of the Zen masters. It’s a position of great honor and I had to learn to anticipate his needs and prepare meals for him during retreats. I often made specialized grilled cheese sandwiches and cheese plates with ornate decorations.

  19. One retreat we did every year at the monastery involved going out to sit at dusk and then making our way back after dark. I learned that you can see a path with your feet if you walk slowly enough.

  20. Though I loved my time at the monastery a year after I left two senior students accused the teachers of abusing power and being narcissistic. I talked to several ex-students and tried to understand why they had left. The stories they told me changed my view of the community and it’s why I no longer practice with those teachers or endorse other people going to the monastery where I spent two important years of my life. I’m still very grateful for their guidance.

  21. When I was in my late twenties I did an epic trip across the US and hiked more than 180 miles in national parks. I finished my trip by going to India for a month which was the first place I encountered Buddhism and meditation. That trip had a HUGE impact on my life.

  22. I ran for multiple student body offices in high school and didn’t win a single one. I thought being smart mattered, but really I wasn’t very good at being popular.

  23. For a long time my favorite color was green but it slowly turned to red over the past 5-10 years.

  24. I didn’t have a cell phone until a couple of years after college and I resisted getting an iPhone for years because I thought they were excessive. I still feel this way about new technology until I have it.

  25. Part of the reason I originally moved to Portland was because I wanted to live somewhere I could go skiing. I trained and worked as a ski instructor my first winter but stopped after my car broke down and I decided not to get it fixed. Then I didn’t ski for 8 years.

  26. I lived without a car for almost a decade and really resisted buying one because I loved the simplicity of life without a car. And although I’m glad I have a car now I still miss the time in my life where I didn’t use one.

  27. In high school I put highlights in my hair several times. In college I dyed my hair fire truck red and at one point had my hair in dreadlocks. I’m lucky that not many pictures of these choices exist.

  28. I was pretty involved in boy scouts until I broke my left arm at camp while riding on a rope swing. After I broke my arm I immediately asked for a stick to bite on when they set my arm. Then I rode in the back of a pick-up in the rain to the hospital but the break was so bad that the rural doctor refused to fix it so I had to ride inside the pickup for two more hours to go to a different hospital before having it set.

  29. Almost ALL of my romantic relationships have either started out as long distance relationships or have ended up being long distance for a significant portion of our time together.

  30. For over 10 years I used marijuana almost daily and was a proud ‘pothead’ for most of it. Though I wasn’t aware I was numbing myself to life. At the time it felt like a good way to cope with all of my feelings and the out of control racing of my mind.

  31. I was born in Germany and lived in Greece until I was 3 years old. On the night I was born, my grandmother got confused and fell down the basement stairs. We ended up going to the hospital together.

  32. Apparently I was anxious to get into the world because my mother wasn’t in labor long and when I was born dislocated a shoulder when I was born. Apparently, I was in a rush to get here being born at 4:18 in the morning.

  33. Though I love camping as an adult, I only went camping once with my family growing up. When I asked my parents why they told me that I whined the entire trip and was so annoying they decided never to take me again. (I of course remember having a great time #kid-memory)

  34. I am incredibly romantic and have been my entire life. I have written a series of letters for a partner I wasn’t going to see for 3 weeks so she could open one from me each day. I have bought overnight tickets to surprise a partner with flowers. I have written countless romantic poems and songs. I’ve even saved old receipts and trinkets in relationships and love creating complex and beautiful romantic experiences for partners.

  35. I was a successful middle and high school wrestler all because I didn’t make the soccer team in middle school. I was a three-time regional champ and placed 5th in the state my senior year. The hardest part was making weight and I tried things like eating a liquid diet, running in a plastic suit, and sitting in a sauna all in order to lose weight.

  36. I didn’t lose my ‘virginity’ until I was a sophomore in college.

  37. I’ve been a writer my entire life and even attended a writing camp when I was in middle school. Though I didn’t get serious about writing until the last few years. If you search well enough you can even find some of my angsty college writing on the internet. https://ergosumsam.livejournal.com/

  38. I have few food preferences, but I hate cheesecake, cheez-its, and goldfish crackers.

  39. I remember most of the important songs I learned growing up. For example, my claim to fame in elementary school was getting the lead in the school musical in which I played Christopher Columbus and I can still sing much of my big solo number (which was of course not about the murder of indigenous people)

  40. While I’m incredibly loving I have a hard time letting love in. But when I do I apparently make a face that lets you know you got it in there.

Ok, that’s it, there are 40 things about me. My hope is that as you read this you’ll see yourself in this and also realize that each of us is rich, deep, and different even as we are boring, ordinary, and the same.

Which is something we can only see when we let others see who we really are.

Love,
Toku

 
by Toku on Uncategorized

I’m Being Breadcrumbed by God

Last year I got a clear message from God, or the universe, or whatever you want to call it, that I needed to do a 9-month dating diet. And so that’s what I did.

For 9 months I didn’t engage with women romantically. Not only that, I even paused some friendships where the energy was flirty. I set aside time for spiritual practice, meditation, journaling, and spending time in nature.

I began to write daily letters to the sacred feminine all while grieving the breakdown of my last relationship.

Slowly, as the grief faded and COVID got worse, something strange started happening to me.
The ambition I used to rely on was nowhere to be found. My long term visions seemed almost meaningless. The more I let go of the future, the more I relaxed.

I still had moments of clarity from time to time. The clouds would part and I would see where I needed to go or do next.

Sometimes these bursts of insight would be clear and full, like knowing I needed to have a certain conversation with my father or that I needed to reach out to an old teacher to clean up a relationship. But sometimes I’d just get a direction, a word, or even just an energy I needed to explore.

I felt it each time I chose a new city to travel to and each time I looked for a new potential client to connect with. But even though these nudges felt magical, I often found myself frustrated. For years I’d been the guy with the five-year plan, the quarterly business focus, and the big hairy audacious goals.
Now I felt like I was drifting from one insight to the next. Except each insight felt different. Because they each invited me into a deeper faith and trust in life, god, and the universe.

It took me a while to realize it, but I was learning to feel, choose, and see from another part of myself. I was being asked to trust this connection to the divine, to the mystical nature of reality, and to my own intuition.

In the past, my life was mostly run by my ego - my desire to prove something to the world - and slowly I was letting that go. I was learning to follow the divine even though the divine had been breadcrumbing me all year.

What they never tell you about faith and a life of deep spiritual practice is just how little you’ll know as you step deeper into the fire of it. They never tell you that as the path unfolds, it becomes less and less about knowing where you’ll be in five years and more about your faith that there is a path, that you are being guided, and that there is art for you to express.

So for now I’ll just keep looking for the next breadcrumb and when I find it, I’ll just take it as it comes.

 
by Toku on Uncategorized

Is Your Love Life At Risk? Learn The 3 Reasons Your Relationship Isn’t In A Rhythm

For 9 months I abstained from romantic relationships.

It’s a choice I made after stepping out of my longest romantic relationship (over 3 years) and my most committed (we were engaged).

Our relationship in many ways had been a fairytale. I first saw her across a dance floor and was drawn to her immediately.

We were friends for a while. My crush was apparent to both of us. Her attraction took more time to develop.

We had an intense first date in a far off city. That left both of us wondering if this thing was going to happen. After all, we lived across the country from one another.

And then I showed up on her doorstep with flowers two days later. Saying I was moving to her city if she’d have me.

She said yes and the fairy tale began.

But of course, there was a lot that wasn’t very magical. I had to work hard to adapt to her. Her diet. Her need for quiet. For things to always be a certain way.

We ignored the things that didn’t make sense. Like how differently we felt about having kids. Like how we fought when we played music together. Like how loud and messy I tend to be and how super neat she wanted everything.

We thought our love was enough. And it was… until it wasn’t.

Now after some time and space to reflect I can see ‘some’ of the mistakes I made.

And a lot of them had to do with how we never really found the rhythm to our relationship. This rhythm is something people don’t talk about a lot.

They talk about polarity and compatibility. They talk about good sex and communication but the rhythm is something else entirely.

EACH RELATIONSHIP HAS A RHYTHM

There’s your rhythm. The way you do life, laundry, shopping, eating. It’s more than just the method or process. It’s the beat to your life.

And then there’s your partner’s rhythm. The way they clean a kitchen, cook dinner, decide which movie to watch on Netflix.

And then there’s the rhythm of the relationship. How we do laundry, talk about our days, decide when to have sex, and dream about the future.

This is the rhythm that determines how a relationship works. It determines what gets talked about, what values are prioritized, and eventually what creates the feeling of a relationship.

But if you’re like most people, you never find this rhythm, because you don’t know how to create it. Instead, you’re probably doing one of three things

  1. One of you is fully adapting to the other’s rhythm:

This is a lot of what I did in my last relationship.

She didn’t eat gluten so I didn’t. She didn’t like watching scary movies so we never did. She needed quiet time at certain hours so I tried to be quiet.

In my mind, I was being chivalrous. I was loving her. But what I was really doing was denying my own needs. Until my needs came knocking like an angry loan shark.

Now it might be that one of you just has more of a rhythm to their life. That’s ok. You can use one person’s rhythm as more of a baseline. But you can’t just go by one person’s rhythm. At least most of us can’t. Because while it may work for that one person, it probably won’t work for the relationship.

And even if it does, one person adapting to another is a hallmark of codependency which makes for a deep but also very unhealthy connection.

So if one of you has a more established routine it’s ok to start there, but you have to find a way to adapt, to modulate, to include what the other partner needs and wants.

If you’re the more routine oriented person, the transition will be hard. You don’t have to change everything but it’s important to make space for the new rhythm to emerge.

If you’re not making space, you might be doing this instead . . .

  1. You’re both compromising all the time

This is another mistake I made later on. I mean luckily we realized we had to shift our dynamic. I owned up to pretending not to have needs. But then instead of owning what I wanted, we simply tried to find a middle ground.

This may seem like the obvious solution. You don’t like Thai food, I don’t like Indian, so we’ll get tacos instead.

And while it may make sense logically, the rhythm of a relationship isn’t simply the halfway point between your beat and mine.

Over time you’ll both end up unhappy. You’ll be eating Tacos and dreaming of pad Thai, while I dream of a fluffy dosa floating on a cloud.

There’s a time and a place for compromise but what makes a relationship workable isn’t just splitting the difference. It’s about each of you really owning what each of you wants: to feel, experience, do, and embody. And then working to create a rhythm that has those needs and desires met on a regular basis.

This can be hard for many people to accept. Especially if you’re the partner who’s used to giving in and setting aside your needs. It’s vulnerable to say I want this.

I’d like if we went for a walk together after work, I’d like you to buy me flowers every week. I don’t want to go on vacation with your family. I don’t want to watch TV while we eat dinner.

Owning what you want is scary. Because you might not get it. Because it may create conflict. But without that honesty, you can’t find the rhythm of the relationship and you can’t see if it has the potential to last long term.

Then again even if your relationship has lasted a while it’s still possible to lose the rhythm. This leads me to the 3rd place relationship rhythms go to die. . .

  1. One or both of you has become resigned or victimized by the pattern of your relationship

This happens when one or both of you have created a rhythm that doesn’t work. Or you’re still following a rhythm that once worked but isn’t’ serving you anymore. Then, instead of addressing what’s not working you simply decide that it can’t be any different.

This happens a lot with people who have kids or for people who have been in a relationship for a while.

This happened to me about 2 years into my last relationship. I gave up on having the kind of sex life I wanted, I resigned myself to having a partner who was ambiguous about having kids, and I gave up on being able to feel heard when we fought.

It would be easy to blame my partner for this but my giving up wasn’t on her. Sure she contributed to our dynamic but it was really all about me just not advocating for myself anymore. I stopped sharing what I needed in an attempt to maintain a peace that wasn’t that peaceful, to begin with.

You see, a relationship rhythm isn’t the same as a relationship rut. It’s not a default position your relationship gets stuck into like the way you can’t help humming holiday carols in December. It’s not something that you just fall into. It’s active. It’s something you have to actively discover and bring life to.

A relationship rhythm is an act of creation.

You and your partner have to birth it together. You have to create it. And you can either do it unconsciously (like so many people do) out of old habits, childhood wounds, and baggage.

Or you can create it out of love, possibility, and innovation.

So if you want Indian and you partner wants Thai, maybe you find a farmers market that has a great booth for each. Or maybe you cook a meal at home that starts with thom kha soup and dosa and moves on to a fusion curry dish.

You don’t compromise and you don’t give up. You find what the needs are at the very foundation and create something that satisfies them both.

You create a rhythm that is something unique to the two of you. And then you see how that feels.

Because that’s really what makes a relationship work. It’s not the cuteness of one of your smiles or the ability of one of you to cook gourmet meals. It’s about how the relationship you create looks and feels to both of you.

To do this well you have to know who you are and why you care about buying organic food. You have to really understand why your partner loves cleaning even if you think it would be more efficient to hire a cleaning service.

To find a rhythm is to find real intimacy, to truly discover what makes you tick as a couple. And while it can be challenging, it is certainly worth the effort.

Love Toku

 
by Toku on Uncategorized

Can You Sing About Sales in Italian?

I decided to write a poem and adapt it into a short Italian aria.

(Which yes I will sing to you at the end of this post)

The music comes from another aria about lost love.

Because lost love has taught me a lot about sitting in tension.

The Art of Sitting In Tension

About 4 years ago I met a girl at an entrepreneurship summer camp. She was pretty, smart, and funny. We became friends and over the course of a few months, I developed feelings for her. She liked me but she wasn’t sure about long-distance (I lived in Portland, she lived in NYC).

Two days after our first date (outside of LA) I bought an overnight plane ticket to New York and showed up on her doorstep with roses. I told her I was moving to the city and asked her if she’d go out with me.

I remember the whole plane ride I sat in the tension of what she might say when I arrived.

–

About 8 months after that I asked her to marry me. I hadn’t planned on asking her. I mean the thought had crossed my mind, but I was going to wait for a few more months. And then I just decided. I dug through a box, pulled out my grandmother’s ring, and proposed.

It’s funny, most proposals don’t have much tension. Most people know the answer, but this felt different. I remember sitting in that tension as she looked at the ring and me.

–

Over the next two years, things shifted. Slowly at first, though if I’m honest the cracks were always there. We started fighting more, it became harder to communicate, she revealed she was more ambivalent about having kids than I had originally thought.

We had good moments, but it was hard. Probably harder than a 2-year-old relationship should be. But I was committed. I had proposed, I had chosen her, even when things were hard, I didn’t want to give up.

The Beginning of The End

One day during a couples coaching session, it hit me. She was hurting. I was too. I gave it some thought and wrote her a letter suggesting we find a way to end things. It took me two weeks but I finally read it to her. She took a couple of weeks and finally said she agreed.

We took 3 months to say goodbye. We divided our stuff. We did a small ceremony in our empty living room. And then it was over.

The tension that got created when I gave her that ring, finally released.

What this has to do with Sales

When I teach coaches about sales, I talk about the power of a proposal. The possibility it holds.

Inside this vision of the future you create with someone is a tension with the way things are now, a tension created from the resistance that we have to overcome.

This tension is a powerful force that creates both fear and clarity.

If you’re not grounded and honest, fear can easily take over.

Some salespeople use this fear to push people across the line.

Scarcity, pain point selling, hard closing tactics.

But if you slow down, this tension reveals everything.

It reveals the things that matter to you.

  • Things like wanting to have kids.
  • Things like a fear that things can’t change even if you try.
  • Things like how you have different visions of the future.
  • Things like a doubt that you will actually rise to the occasion when it finally arrives.

If you can sit with someone in that tension, you can sit with them in the very fire of change.

The important thing to remember is that any exit is a good one so long as you choose it powerfully.

You could say I failed to get married.

You could say our relationship failed.

But in some ways, our proposal, the tension, did exactly what it was meant to do.

We saw how we were no longer able to see the good in one another.

When our plan shifted, other things shifted too. At least for me, I found it much easier to love her and see her beauty when I took a future together off the table.

She was and is an incredible person. She’s just not my person. And I’m not hers.

The tension revealed that.

This is what is possible with sales. At its best, you see the best in me:

  • The insight, skill, and talent I can bring to the table as a coach.
  • The features and benefits of your signature product.
  • The talent and experience you have as an employee

And I see the best in you:

  • The commitment, openness, and passion you bring to the table as a client.
  • The drive you have for serving your customers and solving your toughest problems.
  • The culture and vision you have as an organization.

If it’s a fit, if we can defeat fear and create an incredible relationship. We create a commitment that becomes the foundation for change.

If it’s not a fit for either one of us for whatever reason, we say no and we walk away.

Ideally, we do this from an empowered kind of place.

Not an apology. But a choice.

If we can do that together, the tension serves its purpose.

It clarified and helped us to see what’s important.

But no matter the answer we have to sit.

  • We have to propose.
  • We have to choose to see the best in one another.
  • We have to have the courage to say yes. (hard)
  • We have to have the courage to say no. (even harder)

This is why I love sales.

It’s also why I still believe in wild, crazy, passionate, romantic love.

I am probably a sucker, but I have slowly learned that I don’t sell myself in love.

What I sell is a vision of the future.

And the vision I’ve got is one of adventure, play, romance, passion, and the beautiful simplicity of life.

I think I’ll find a buyer.

And until then, I’ll sit in this lovely tension.

The same tension I invite every person I coach.

To sit inside.

Love,

Toku

And here is the aria –

And here’s is the poem it’s based on –

To see the good in someone. Simply for being themselves Is a sacred gift To sit in the tension of commitment Is an act of courage and love Easy with an open heart Impossible in thought and comparison

–

Riconoscere il buono nelle altre persone. Solo per ciò che sono È un sacro dono Sostenere la tensione del fervore È un atto di coraggio e amore Se hai un cuore aperto è facile Se ti perdi in pensieri e confronti è impossibile

 
by Toku on Skillset, Uncategorized

7 Questions for Every Writer

It’s easy to go on an endless chase for likes and popularity, but more and more I keep returning to a fundamental question.

Who am I as a writer?
What do I want to say to the world?

So I offer this mostly to myself and maybe for you to consider as well.

How will it change people?
I want to change people –

Seth Godin says all marketing is about bending culture and I guess some part of me wants to change people, to change the way they think about life, about themselves.

My life’s purpose is to serve those walking the path of awakening. I want to wake people up, to life and to what’s possible. So this is what I want from my writing.

Does it change people? Does it wake them up? Or is it simply a distraction?

How will it change you?
I want it to change me –

When I write about my life I truly begin to understand it, it’s probably why my writing often feels like a stream of consciousness. I process as I write.

I want my writing to change me, the way I think, the way I view the world. If I challenge myself as a writer I will also challenge my way of thinking. I’ll become better. I’ll be more kind, more loving, more open, and more wise.

Is this writing making me better? Is it pushing me? Is it challenging the way I think?

Will you make art?
I want to make art –

I’ve wanted to be an artist my whole life.But I can’t paint, I can’t draw, I can’t code. It took me a long time to see words are my code and the reader’s mind is my canvas.

I don’t just want to write to inform or compell, I want to write to make art. I love reading other people’s writing because I can see the art of it. I want to do that, I want to keep making art, to write in a way that get something done with brilliance

Is this art? Is it creative? Can I say it with fewer words? Can I articulate it more clearly?

What will you leave?
I want to leave something –

I’m going to die. We all are. My writing too will also die. Few books and writers live on. But I still want to leave something.

I have an image in my mind of my grandchildren holding a book I wrote. Maybe it’s a book of poems, but I’m not sure yet.

I’ve read writing by both my grandfathers. It’s just these little snippets, but they are so lovely. It’s like they’re reaching across time.

It would be cool if my books lasted generations, but really I’d be fine if it just survived in my family. A small thing to leave, even though nothing really lasts.

Is this what I want to leave? What would I want to write that would matter 100 years from today? What about me is important to know? What have I learned I want to pass on? How might it help?

Can you love it?
I want to love it –

I don’t need to always love the process of writing. Sometimes it’s work. But mostly I want to love it. I want to feel the words flow out of me onto the page, even if the page is just 1’s and 0’s. Even if the writing is terrible.

Are you enjoying this? Are you inspired? Are you creating beauty? Are you seeing the beauty you’re creating?

Who will read it?
I want you to read it –

This can’t just be about me, it has to be about you too. I care about what you want, what you want to change, and what you want to be different about your life.

At the intersection of your concerns and my insight is where a conversation can happen. Even if my half is on the page and your half is in your mind;I want us to talk. And that means making a guess at where you are and doing my best to meet you there.

If I do this well we can meet each other even if we never meet.

What do you care about? Why should you read this? What might make you turn away? What can I say that would help you?

Will you write?
I want to write it –

At the end of the day, there is simply a commitment: to writing, creating, and spending the time crafting words. I am a writer. I almost don’t need anything other than that.

Writing can be its own justification. Like the best kind of love. You don’t love to get something or to give something. You love to love. You live to live.

As circular as it is, there’s a truth to it I can’t explain. Maybe that’s why I’m a writer.

Are you writing? Why not? What if you started? What if it being bad was ok? What if just writing was enough?

To be a writer.

It sounds so significant and grand, but it’s also humbling. I get to join this conversation. I likely won’t be the loudest voice, or the most poetic, or the most successful, but I can still add my part, my words, my love, my commitment to the mix.

This is who I am as a writer.

Who are you?

 
by Toku on Skillset, Uncategorized

Using Feedback to Improve Writing

As a coach, I’m good at helping people produce their best work. But that doesn’t always translate to me producing my own best work.

Last week my marketing and writing assistant informed me that I’m entirely too hard on myself. That my writing is good, she enjoys reading it, and many other people do as well. Yet I’ve had this feeling there has to be a better way to make my writing better.

After all, I’m a coach, I give people feedback and perspective for a living, so how could I use that skill to improve my writing?

I found the answer in an online course

ALT-MBA

For the past two weeks, I’ve been taking Seth Godin’s ALT-MBA which is a crazy business learning sprint where you ship 12 projects in 4 weeks and give feedback to your peers along the way.

After shipping my first two projects I noticed something.

Every time I gave feedback on someone else’s project I improved my own.

I started to realize that something interesting was happening when I gave feedback to other people. A different part of my brain was turning on.

When I published my own projects I thought, this is pretty good!

I couldn’t really see what was missing. As much as I tried to look at my work through other people’s eyes I couldn’t do it.

THESE ARE MY WORD BABIES AND I LOVE MY BABIES

But all I had to do was take a stroll around the nursery and see what other people had made and I found all sorts of stuff that could be different.

I saw what I liked

  • Clever titles
  • Explanations of the process of creation
  • Fun stories about team members

I saw what I didn’t like

  • Vague descriptions
  • Missing information
  • Hints at gold but no gold to be found

After giving 1-3 people feedback I immediately had 5-10 ideas about how I could make my own project better.

And so I would go back and edit my project, make it better, and smile.

Don’t get me wrong, my projects aren’t perfect, but I’ve been blown away by how simple this trick is.

Ever since I’ve found it, I’ve used it to improve my writing, work on my website, even my coaching ability.

Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1) Find something you want to improve – your writing, website, pictures, whatever

Step 2) Create a rough draft, a mock-up, a few sample shots

Step 3) Find other examples of that thing you want to improve

Step 4) Give it feedback using the following format:

Brilliance – here’s what I loved about this, here’s what worked, here’s what I enjoyed.

Opportunity – Here’s what would make it better, here’s what I wanted to know more about, here’s what was missing

Step 5) Go back and look at your work and integrate the feedback you gave to other people into your work.

It’s that simple.

Creativity never happens in a vacuum, it’s always a conversation, if you’re willing to invite a different part of yourself to the table, you may be amazed at what you discover.

 
by Toku on Skillset, Uncategorized

The 5 Minute Guide to Choosing a Coach

Coaches are brilliant at making it seem like anything is possible and challenging your way of thinking, this makes them both highly skilled at helping you but also highly skilled at making promises they may not be able to keep.

Despite that coaching is still one of the most effective and powerful ways to make a change in your life.

Here’s a short guide to choosing a coach:

1) Ignore their website – It’s not that their website doesn’t matter, it’s just that it doesn’t always correlate to reality. Some of the best coaches I know have sort of ok websites. Most of the most over hyped coaches I know have AMAZING websites. A good website will soften you up for your conversation with a coach, and even sell you on the person you may become if you work with them.

Sometimes a website is a reflection of the coaches brilliance, sometimes it’s a beautiful artifice for them to hide behind. Look at it, but don’t decide because of it.

2) Pay attention to how they make you feel about yourself – Spend some time talking to a coach so you can tell what working with them will be like. But be careful not to get caught up in their bright, shiny, charm. You need to pay attention to how you feel around them. Just be careful about putting them on a pedestal. If you notice yourself doing this take them down, if you find you can’t it might be a red flag. If you feel a bit like a fan-boy/girl/being that may be a red flag.

We all project greatness onto people we admire, but if you feel like you’re dying for their attention and approval, that’s an indication that you may not be grounded in your choice.

Instead, look for someone who makes you feel inspired, powerful, and connected to your deepest desires. You should admire them, but you shouldn’t be obsessed with them.

3) What are they all about? – Great coaches are about you, your life, and your desires.. They might have a system or process laid out for you to use, but they will design their coaching to what YOU want and need.

Some coaches are very much about themselves, same as any industry. It can be hard to grow with a coach who’s attention isn’t on you, so look for someone who puts their attention on you, your needs, wants, and desires.

4) Do you actually like them? – You should enjoy talking to them. I mean that’s what you’re going to be doing. If you clash, if they feel pushy, if you don’t enjoy them, don’t hire them. They don’t have to be your best friend, but you should generally enjoy who they are and enjoy spending time with them.

5) A little intimidation is good – The best coaches are the ones that you feel a bit nervous around. If you’re nervous they’ll call you out or that you’re not advanced enough to work with them, that’s a good sign. You want to like your coach but you also want to have a healthy respect for their work.

6) Will they push you? – You can find people to agree with you. Those people are called friends. That’s not what a coach does. A coach should challenge your thinking and how you show up in the world. If they don’t push you, you won’t grow.

7) Seeing your blindspots is key – We tend to surround ourselves with people that think like us, and many people hire coaches who think like them. One value of a coach is their different perspective. There should be JUST enough overlap so you can communicate, but also just enough difference that they notice things you miss and provide a different perspective.

8) Ask your gut and ask your friends – My gut often knows who I need to hire even when I have doubts. My friends can help me break the spell of an alluring coach or give me new ways to think about the choice I’m making. Refer to these two data points often.

9) Are you a little scared to invest? – The last thing to consider with a coach is the investment. Some coaches convince you that investing a large sum of money is the ticket to success. It isn’t. But great coaches also charge a healthy fee for what they do.

There are some bargains out there to be found, but most great coaches know their worth. I usually hire coaches who ask me to stretch financially. But stretch isn’t break. The price should challenge you, maybe even a lot, but you shouldn’t have to give them a credit card on the call just to save you from yourself.

Choosing a coach is a personal process. And while I’ve never made a BIG mistake choosing a coach (except for maybe the first one I hired) if you’re thoughtful and willing to listen to your gut you’ll likely make a good choice. It is really about being grounded and taking a risk. Any good coach will be a risk, but because a great coach can have such a profound impact on your life, that risk is usually worth it.

Love,
Toku

 
by Toku on Skillset, Uncategorized

The Many Faces of Burnout

As a coach, I’ve seen my clients ‘quit’ in a variety of ways.

Some get outright mad and yell at me demanding their money back.
Some just stop showing up with anything to talk about.
Some have great insights in their sessions but then do nothing with them.

All of these are forms of quitting.

Burnout is also a form of quitting.

When a light bulb burns out, it quits working. The integrity of the filament just isn’t enough to carry the current through it anymore.

If you develop a stronger filament you can carry more current, but you can’t do that while the light is burning. It has to be turned off, redesigned, and then turned back on again.

In the start-up world, leaders rarely get a chance to turn off, redesign, and strengthen their capacity to carry the “current” of challenge, uncertainty, internal and external criticism, and a high level of ambition.

So leaders burn out in 3 pretty common ways:

1. They flame out – these are the obvious ones. Walls are punched, things are yelled, people may be fired, relationships might be ruined. This is often followed by a sabbatical or ‘time off’. Rarely enough to make a difference. But enough to return to the previous state of dysfunction.

2. They suffer brownouts – These are periods of time where they sort of check out, mentally or emotionally. Their performance drops, they become engaged in unhealthy behaviors like drinking, playing excessive video games, and maybe even online shopping.

3. They suffer displacement burnout – This is when the burnout doesn’t happen at work but happens in their personal lives. Their relationships fail, they suffer health crises, or something else explodes. I can’t even list all the personal mishaps leaders I work with find themselves in.

No matter how it happens, it happens because a leader is simply running too much current through their system.

So what’s the solution?

It’s two-fold:

1. Turn off the light – Step out of leadership, take time off, be in nature, pray, meditate. Find a place away from leadership that you can go to. The big challenge here is that most leaders don’t do this. They dim the lights and somewhat step away, but this isn’t the same. The bulb is still warm, the current is still flowing, and so you can’t repair or strengthen it.

2. Upgrade your capacity – This ISN’T the same as upgrading your knowledge or being more efficient. To upgrade your capacity you have to upgrade a few things at once. You need to upgrade the load your nervous system can take. You can do this by using meditation and exercise. Next you need to upgrade your humility and ability to learn. You can do this by hiring a coach and listening to feedback with an open mind. Finally, you need to upgrade your capacity for love. So often leaders are driven by fear, but most great things aren’t created by fear, they are created by love.

If you can align with your commitment to love, you are less likely to burn out. You are also more likely to love what you do.

People who run for love, run forever. Because when something comes from love, it creates its own reason to keep going.

If you don’t want to quit, if you want to thrive, and function better. Stop running from your fears. Stop trying to run faster from them. Take a break. And then come back from love. You may be surprised by how easy and joyful your work becomes.

If you are ready to come from love, contact me to schedule a call.

 
by Toku on Uncategorized

You Don’t Have to Listen to Your Coach

I’m an executive coach. That means people pay me an incredible amount of money just to talk with them. So much so that I once explained to a stranger that my business model was actually most similar to a phone sex operator.

Why do they do this?

Well I could give you a long list of the changes I’ve helped my clients create, the single conversations that changed relationships, saved business ventures, and led to more joy and satisfaction. This is probably what should be on my website.

I could say people pay me to tell them the truth in a way they can actually hear. Or more simply I could say people pay me because coaching works. Not just coaching with me but coaching in general.

If you work with a skilled coach you will improve, enjoy, and thrive more than you thought possible.

But sometimes coaching doesn’t work, and when that happens it totally sucks, but the reasons are actually pretty predictable. This is true whether your coach is someone you’ve hired or just someone who’s trying to offer you feedback in the moment.

This is why coaching doesn’t work and how you can fix it –

1. You’re not listening –

We have an incredible ability to ignore other people’s feedback even when it’s obvious. When you get new information that challenges the way you see yourself it’s easier to ignore the feedback then face reality. The feeling of being exposed, even to yourself is painful and humbling. So you avoid seeing these things or you explain them away.

Coaches are very good at pointing out what you don’t want to see. We practice looking for the blindspots other people miss. Your coach is likely telling you again and again what’s missing, but you’re not listening to them. Instead, you are justifying why what you’re doing is right, understandable, or situational. Which is fine, if you want to stay the same.

However, if you want to change, try to listen to your coach and take on what they have to offer. If it doesn’t work you can put it aside, but start by listening.

2. You don’t actually think change is possible –

If I came along and told you to jump over a ten-foot fence, you’d look at me like I was an alien. When people ask us to do the impossible we respond with confusion and incredulity. Regularly I see something my clients can do that they don’t think is possible. Sometimes they doubt their abilities because of limiting beliefs, sometimes they simply don’t understand that pathway from here to there. They don’t listen because they have doubts. There’s nothing wrong with setting realistic goals and working to achieve them, but often their realism is just pessimism in disguise.

A good coach will see more options than you do, they’ll see things you aren’t aware of, they’ll believe in a version of you that you’re becoming rather than who you are right now. But if you don’t think change is possible then you’ll end up stuck where you are. The way to change this is to notice where you shut down and start to argue for your own limitations. When this happens try coming from the point of view that it IS possible and then asking yourself IF it was possible, how would I get there? This is also a great place to get your coach to help you.

3. You’ve already quit –

My clients want to quit all the time. This may seem like an odd thing to say, but to me, wanting to quit is a sign of growth.

Think about a really tough workout you’ve done. At some point, you likely wanted to quit. I remember when I ran marathons and triathlons there was often a place during the race where I just wanted to stop. My legs were tired, my feet hurt, I didn’t care about getting a stupid t-shirt.. But each time I managed to push through and find more energy on the other side. When you’re developing yourself as a leader or working to change your life you’re going to run into places where you want to quit. When this happens you have three options – quit, keep going, or pretend like you’re going to keep going while you’re actually quitting.

For coaching clients, qutting looks like going through the motions, showing up coaching calls without anything to work on, not applying any of the insights you gain, getting stuck in the same cycle of complaints, or focusing on what isn’t working about your life or coaching. This is a way to quit without actually admitting that you’re quitting.

Coaching almost never works when this happens because if you’re not engaged and committed to change, you won’t change.

The good news is you can bring this to your coach. You can simply tell them that you are losing faith, not really giving this your all, or just going through the motions. A good coach will know how to with with people when they falter on the path to a new life, so they should be able to help you get back on the right track.

Final Thoughts

Look, you don’t have to listen to your coach. Whether it is someone you hired to help you change or someone in your life that’s just trying to help you out or mentor you. But the cost of not listening can be high.

You have the chance to listen or to ignore. Most people ignore, they hide, and they avoid. But life isn’t meant to be survived — it literally ends with death — it’s meant to be lived. You’re meant to grow and develop as long as you’re alive.

And this simple act of listening and being open to the coaching around you can have an incredible impact on who you are. If you’re open to it.